The Canadian Press recently had an opportunity to step inside the NHL’s newly-upgraded Situation Room.
The Toronto-based Situation Room handles league-initiated reviews to determine if goals were scored legally (not kicked, batted, etc.) as well as Coach’s Challenges for offside, goaltender interference or missed stoppages. In all cases, the final rulings on those reviews comes from the room, not the on-ice officials.
The Press reports that Tuesday night’s Frozen Frenzy action – with all 32 teams in action – had 12 staffers on duty watching the night’s action alongside Colin Campbell, NHL Director of Hockey Operations; Kris King, NHL Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations; Rod Pasma, NHL vice-president of Hockey Operations; and Senior Director of Hockey Operations Kay Whitmore.
Retired NHL referee Dave Jackson previously elaborated on the folks working in the Situation Room.
“Every game has a dedicated ‘Logger’ who reviewed and documented every zone entry, scoring chance, and infraction with the help of three high-definition monitors and super slo-mo.”
“[In addition to the leadership group noted above, there’s also] one retired NHL official who is a current supervisor and takes a turn swinging through the room on a monthly basis.”
Current NHL officiating supervisors include Shane Heyer, Marc Joannette, Mike Leggo, Bill McCreary, Brad Meier, Dan O’Halloran, Rob Shick, Don VanMassenhoven, and Brad Watson; no details on which are in the Situation Room rotation.
Kris King, NHL Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations:
“We did a full renovation of the office over the last two years, but the genesis of of partially doing that was to build this new room. We did a lot of research, looked at sports books, looked at restaurants, looked at what things might work for us as far as a layout and this is what we kind of came up with. Once we started to decide how we wanted this to look, we were able to work with our IT people to get the feeds and the different things that would make this room work.”
“Even when I came in in 2001, there was no HD for hockey. We were watching SD feeds on 10-inch screens and taping them with a VCR at the back of the room. We were making calls on the calls that we could make. The ability to to obviously manage the games from here is better than it’s ever been [as well as] the ability to educate our officials. Obviously we’re known for challenges, reviews, and helping the referees look at their decisions and what they’ve made in real time.”
“We don’t hate your team and we’re not out to screw you. Obviously when a decision is made, there’s one team that’s going to enjoy the decision or like it and there’s another team that’s going to think that they got jobbed. We don’t always agree, but in the end, we have to make a decision.”
“Generally when we don’t all agree, we stay with the call on the ice. That’s what the general managers want us to do. Unless there’s […] conclusive video evidence to overturn a call, we leave it alone.”
Daniel Cash, Managing Director, Sony Hawk-Eye North America
“It’s a very complicated setup and system, but what’s most important is that the user interface is as intuitive as it can be.”
“Technology has advanced in the 10 years that we’ve worked with the NHL and we’re helping the NHL stay cutting-edge. With the 4K images that we’re transporting back to centralized location, I mean that’s not trivial. We’ve worked very close to the NHL to to make that to make that happen. It’s improved with the technology around. You talk about the different cameras, now we have different resolutions, different frame rates. We’re improving with the broadcast in that regard.”
Those technological advances will continue as the league looks to find other ways to help the officials get calls right, including using optical tracking to determine accurate data on the height of a stick deflection or the precise instant the puck crosses the goal line or blueline.
“I could definitely see a world in which we’re leveraging those data points to augment officiating,” Cash told the Press. “It’s going to be very important to this room.”
For the latest in the Situation Room’s rulings, check out our Coach’s Challenge Tracker:
